In some situations, such as when a patient is in a hospital (e.g., in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)), there is physiologic monitoring of the patient (e.g., monitoring of heart rate and blood oxygen saturation (SpO2)). When physiologic data reaches certain thresholds, a physiologic monitor alarm may be set off so that a nurse or doctor can check on the patient. A false alarm may be described as an alarm that is set off even though the patient does not need to be checked on and, as such, the alarm has no clinical significance.
False alarms cause noise and alarm fatigue for those monitoring the physiologic data and desensitize clinicians to patient alarms. For example, alarm fatigue may result in staff desensitization and a decrease in quality of monitoring (e.g., ignoring of true (not false) alarms).